在Microsoft Workflow Foundation中晃荡了两天
很久之前就为VS2005打了WF,但最初的想法是很单纯,以为就像VS创建一个Windows应用程序一样,创建WF也一样拖拖控件,一句代码也不用写就可以完成,但实际操弄起来,发现完全不是这么一回事,虽然WF的designer非常图形化,但要与host application之间,还是需要写一些代码才可以完成得了。
这几天又来了冲动,要学学到底WF是什么一个东西。周末在家里就捣鼓了两天,才慢慢有了一些头绪。看看Paul Andrew (Microsoft .NET Framework Product Manager for WF and WCF) 怎么描述WF的:
WF is a software developer technology
- It's the programming model, engine and tools for building workflow-enabled software on Windows
- It gives software developers a model driven tool which is higher level but still integrated with .NET code
- It's seriously extensible to enable a wide range of software development projects that require process execution or business logic execution
- It's targetted at Independand Software Vendors (ISVs) both Microsoft products and external product developers. We spend a lot of time planning the features for this audience
- It's been successfully used by many MS products and customer projects despite only being released in Nov 2006
WF is not a software product
- It doesn't have a server process that you can directly run in a data center, you have to build this or integrate with IIS
- It doesn't have administrative tools, reporting tools, management tools or monitoring tools. We have some samples for these that you can work into your softwareproducts
- The workflow designer is best suited to developers, not business analysts. Though I have heard of some projects using our designer with a business analyst buddying with a software developer and our designer is freely redistributable.
- It doesn't have tools that IT Pros need or end users need. It's focussed only on what software developers need.
从MSDN中的WF Tutorials学起,将Sequential和State Machine操练了一遍,再下了Kenn Scribner的WF Step By Step,呵呵,看看能不能沿着大师们的脚步来学习WF。